HES: Re: Is Trade Unique to Humans?

[John C. Médaille]

Deirdre McCloskey wrote:
>Dear Dr. Medaille,
>
>Yes: we all need the virtues, beyond Prudence 
>Only.  So I have recently come to realize, as 
>for example in The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for 
>an Age of Commerce (2006).  Economists by 
>instinct, and after Bentham, try always to get 
>along on Prudence Only.  Smith would not have approved!


Yes, indeed. Prudence is only meaningful in 
relation to the other virtues, and without them 
she becomes mere calculation. Prudence is the 
"mother of all virtues," but without her children she's just an old witch.


John C. Médaille